Social Media Presence and Strategy of Deloitte

Question: Discuss about the Social Media Presence and Strategy of Deloitte. Answer: Introduction Social media has now become an important part of any companys branding and marketing strategy. Social media ends up providing a way to directly interact with consumers, it many times is a face of the company, a great way to understand the consumer sentiments and hire employees, issue important notice, etc. Deloitte is a consulting, auditing company with a significant social media presence online. They are very active and involved with their followers. We would be looking at their social media strategy. Social Media Presence: LinkedIn: Almost all the major companies are present on LinkedIn, since LinkedIn is the world largest professional network website. Even though Deloitte is a country specific partnership model consulting firm, but they maintain a common page for Deloitte as a whole which captures all the service lines. There are more than 200,000 subscribers of Deloitte page and they share informative contents related to auditing, taxation, latest Government Regulation, their consulting approach and technology. They showcase themselves as few of those vendors who believe in end to end suctioning. They are very active on LinkedIn and very prompt in replying to queries as well and hence their page is pretty responsive and famous. Facebook: This is biggest social network that is present in the world. Going by the number of people using Facebook, the stat goes like if Facebook would have been a country then it would have been the third largest populated nation in the world. Deloitte maintains a very responsive Facebook page in which they unleash the potential of connecting with the people. There they share more people centric material and try to showcase their professionalism and ability to connect with the people at large(Semonsu, 2010). The posts are very less related to professional know how but are more inclined towards mannerism and professionalism that they believe is the way professional must like their life like. Twitter: Twitter is microblogging site, which most of the young population uses to connect with their favorite companies and news feeds. They maintain a very busy page on twitter and through that they keep on sharing their success stories and new wins and more importantly whenever they publish any information on the internet, twitter is their Go to website to post and get maximum number of hits(Lee McCabe, 2013). They introduce their leadership and thought leadership through twitter and they have a huge following. They are also very active on forums like World Economic Forums etc. in which they provide their point of view on the discussions. The website which is the go to website now when a person wishes to get some information about the company. Ranging from the profiles they have to offer to the interview information and even the salary related information(Jantsch, 2014). Deloitte is pretty active on the website and formally approves majority of information that is shared by people on Glassdoor. This helps them to build a sense of trust among the people and hence people find them a reliable company to join. They even encourage their staff to rate them on Glassdoor, which not many companies do. Deloitte believes that the way it treats its employees, they maintain good feedback overall. Social Media Audience: Professionals: Being a consulting company they always need good pool of consultants to be collaborative with them and social media is the way they try to approach the good pool of professionals. They share some really informative stuffs like reports and point of view on social media that professionals follow them to keep themselves updated in the current happenings in the professional world(IBM, 2012). It is not easy to maintain this contact as there are tons of consulting services sharing loads of material. This way professionals follow them and they have their target audience with them which they can reach out to in case they need a new resource. Prospective Clients: They can show their through leaderships and point of views on various topics by which the companies can see if they have solution to their budding problems or they have found out a problem that is not recognized by the companies yet. This way they are able to showcase their roadshow free of cost and make a solid connect with their prospective clients and ensure to give them a flavor of their knowledge capabilities that they bring on the table. This way they become a huge favorites of the clients and when such a work is desired the companies know whom to approach. CEO Level Collaborations: All the business strategic decisions are taken by the C level executives only and that is the reason they need to collaborate with them. They are through in bringing them in discussions with their proactive pitching towards the areas of interests for the C Level executives and ensuring that they are able to break some conversation with them and hence this is an opportunity for them to present a sales pitch(Sitel, 2012). This way they are able to sell a considerable amount of business. This is a very innovative mode as C Level executives have the budgets for the consulting engagements and hence they are able to thorough insights that are needed. Universities: Deloitte is known for attracting a good pool of people straight from the campuses and that is the reason they wants to maintain a good relation with the universities. They do it by maintaining a brand among the students by sharing stuff that is of relevance to them and again offering internships etc. All this collaboration is easier to form and maintain when done through social media. This is not a straight and direct method of campus hiring. The thing is that in order to attract the best talent, there is a need to maintain an image and that is achieved by Social media. Competitors: Consulting services are offered by more than one thousand companies across the globe and that in order to maintain a differentiation among the competitors, there is a need to showcase the capabilities at which Deloitte is working and hence Social media is a platform for them to show their competitors some insights around the amazing work that they are developing,. This is not just to prove that they are notch ahead, but also to ensure that if there is any collaboration opportunity then the same may be achieved and hence a better solution can be presented in the partnership mode in the market. This is their way of attacking the market. Social Media Marketing: Point of Views: Point of view is a thought paper that is published by the companies in order to show their understanding on the given subject and to ensure that they are able to prove that they have the best understanding on the subject overall. This is the simple and short of letting the world know that Deloitte does maintains a strong capability in the subject and hence the results are bound to be in the positive interest. The thing that must be noticed here is that Point of Views are not the solution but an understanding established towards the problem and how can a good solution be prepared around. White Papers: White papers are another form of though leaderships but in some level of depth and also toward targeting a small, niche and very specific business proposition or solution. Through this the consultants of Deloitte basically showcase their experience and ensure that their knowledge is known to all and they are treated as the SME in the area. The White papers are the approach to tell the world that inside Deloitte some thorough business problems are solved with the most effective solutions that has the ability to make a loss making entity into a profitable engagement and also ensuring that results are achieved quickly. Thought Leaderships: This about proposals and pursuits that they publish online as a part of their success stories. This is more to showcase the companies in the similar genres that they have done some excellent works in the field stated in the thoughts and that the company may be suffering from the similar problems(KPMG, 2010). This way there is a chance to basically fetch the same account in the similar industry and hence expand the business in the right direction. Though leadership is something that all the consulting companies do, but Deloitte is meticulous in their knowledge sharing capabilities and hence the results are also amazing. Reports: They do a lot of reports around some prevailing business or industry and do a thorough analysis around the future of the business and that is what they make public. The amount to effort that goes into making a report of that thorough nature is very high and hence it gives an insight about the companys ability to take a dig at the issues and ensure that some good outcomes are attained. This is made available for free most of the time and hence gives an opportunity to outside stakeholders to see how the people of Deloitte are able to approach the problem. Industrial Insights: This is a very interesting aspect of sharing that Deloitte does. They provide some very thorough industry insights and they are able to capture the essence of the industry as is scenario and also able to see what is going to happen to the industry in some time frame. Through this they propose solution around the problems and hence it is a good opportunity to basically go ahead and convert the sales properly. Industry insights are kind of eye openers for companies as they are able to show the roadmap to the industries and hence industries can take a calculate decision in their project budgeting. Ethics, Privacy Security: Non Sharing of Client related Data: They do share a lot of material and sometimes the information is also about the account that they have won or deployed successfully. But they do manage that they only share some very selective information about the client through social media and they are ethical in non sharing of any data that is a trade secret of the client. They maintain the ethical relation and hence able to manage the relation in a long term format. Client data is always shared in collaboration with the client and they are professional in this regard. Sometime Client is not comfortable in sharing some really confidential data and Deloitte ensures that none of their employees also do not share any data that they are not supposed to share. No forced recommendations: They always maintain a dignified relationship with their followers and in none of their social media touch point have they ever shared any forced recommendation unlike many other consulting companies. The reason for this is that they maintain a single page for all their consulting offerings which they project as an end to end solution offering. However, many companies project it as a different offering and hence if a person has liked their single page they will force them to like their other pages and hence it makes the learning experience very rugged and hence they are good in managing their online accounts. The force recommendation concept was started by mainly IT companies where they have a separate department for each offering. But that is not the case with Deloitte. No newsfeed on subscriptions: They share data in a systematic manner and not in a way that they wish to just share something. Whatever they share they want people to read it and understand it and if needed should also discuss the stuff to expand the knowledge horizons. The news feed is not their way of working, they work on interest group sharing model in which they share stuff with relevant people based on what they want to learn or read and hence that makes the collaboration very effective and ensures that they provide quality input to the business professionals and help them to collaborate in a very defined manner, such that they are able to build a stronger network with the masses in a proper manner. Non Sharing of Details of Subscribers: They have millions of subscribers and they always ensure that they will never share their details with other pages. They maintain the secrecy of the data shared by the people who have subscribed them and always maintain an ethical collaboration with them. This is to prove that ethical working is a way of life for them and that they will not pass on any information to the other companies and share the stuff shared by the subscribers exclusively with them is something that is there to ensure that company is working hard to ensure that there is no loss of trust at any level of understanding, Usually, companies may share the data but then where is the trust that is broken by the company. Social Media Technologies: Search Engine Optimization: This is one of the core technology that is there is use as a part of unleashing the social media capabilities. The Social media is all about maintaining a shorter distance between the target audience and yourself(MCGRATH, 2010). If in that case the company is not being shown in the top of the search charts then there is no way that a company will by any means get the traction that is needed to be achieved. The search results are important and not just for the home page, but also of the shares and thought leadership that is produced by the company. This leads to the development of a pool of followers and based on that all the other demands are fulfilled. Consider a situation in which CEO of the company is seeking possible point of views for a business problem he is facing. Now in case the results of Deloittes capabilities are not shown in the first few results then it is a loss of opportunity for them and hence loss of sales. The account is grown as land and expand strategy and using this feature it is almost a loss game for Deloitte if they ignore the possibilities to grab every opportunity and SEO is their ticket to excel in that manner. Social Media Analytics: Social Media analytics is a very important tool to ensure that the company is actually targeting the right set of people and that is possible only when the data is analyzed thoroughly. The data is available everywhere nowadays and those player who are able to crunch it most efficiently are the ultimate winners of the race(Collin, 2009). This is what Deloitte is doing properly, they analyze it properly that who are the C Level executives who are viewing their reports and what are the kind of shares that are gaining the maximum amount of tractions and also what is the most sensitive and approachable geography for them. In this manner they are able to ensure that they are able to get hold of the best business results for themselves and that they are also sure that what are the kind of markets, they must approach and ensure to get good results. These are some of the intruding business problems that are not solved readily in the set up. Analytics is the solution and Deloitte is using it effectively and in a proper manner without much issues. Target Audience Acquisition: This is an extension of the analytics piece that ones they have identified the right set they approach them with the correct business proposition and hence able to attain good results that are complete and recurring. Conclusion As we have seen Deloitte is very active in social media, mainly in LinkedIn as it a social network of professionals. Because of the type of business, it regularly engages with the audience with thought leadership content. Deloitte regularly uses social media advertising to reach their target audience. As social media also reveals important insights as to the number of visitors, their actions, etc. Deloitte is one of those companies that have shifted its offline marketing budget to online and reaping amazing benefits out of it. References: Collin, P. (2009). Benefits of Social Networking Services. New South Whales: University of NSW. IBM. (2012). From social media to Social CRM. Massachusates: IBM Global Business Services. 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